Museum audio guides in German

How to provide an audio guide in German

A German guide is added to a guide that already exists rather than built from nothing. The English stops are translated, reviewed by someone who reads German, and narrated, and the German version then sits behind the same QR code the English version already uses. Nothing on the wall changes, and no second sign is printed.

In practice a venue works through it in this order, and the review step is the one most often skipped and most often regretted.

• Settle the regional variant and register before any translation starts
• Translate the English stops, keeping the source text locked while that happens
• Have a German reader review it, ideally someone who knows the collection
• Narrate the reviewed text, checking proper nouns and place names first
• Publish it behind the QR codes already on the wall, with no reprinting

What German needs from your layout

German commonly runs 10 to 35% longer than English, and it produces the longest individual words of any language you are likely to publish.

Compound nouns are the practical problem. A single German word can be long enough to overflow a button, a heading, or a narrow column, so any layout that cannot wrap mid-word will break on German before any other language.

Sie throughout, and the reader you are writing for

Visitor-facing German uses Sie. This is not a stylistic preference and getting it wrong is immediately noticeable to a German-speaking visitor.

Standard German serves visitors from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Swiss German is a spoken variety rather than a separate written standard, so one written version is enough, though Swiss orthography does not use ß.

Getting the German narration right

Narration in German raises questions that do not exist in English, and they are far cheaper to answer before a voice records anything than after.

• Compound nouns need correct stress placement or they become hard to parse by ear.
• Umlauts change meaning, so a voice that flattens them produces the wrong word.
• German narration of English names is a frequent inconsistency worth checking across stops.

Where German fits in your language plan

Across the New Zealand museums using Journey Pal, between 50% and 60% of guide use is in English. That is our own usage data, and it is worth knowing before committing to a long list of languages: local-language listening is usually the largest share, and translations extend a guide rather than being the reason for one.

That makes German an addition to a working guide rather than a prerequisite for launching. Get the source script right, publish it, then add German where your visitor numbers justify the translation and, just as importantly, where you have someone who can review it.